FRANKLIN COUNTY - While heroin addiction and overdoses continue to worry community members and Franklin County officials, recovering drug addicts are also finding themselves with few options locally when seeking help for their addictions.

Frequent questions at a May town hall meeting and Community Film Night concentrated on what someone is supposed to do if they think their loved one is addicted and where to take them to receive help.

The answer, up until very recently, was not found in Franklin County.

Until 2016, there were two drug specific inpatient rehabilitation programs in Franklin County and no halfway houses or recovery houses for when those in rehab are ready to come out. The area does offer help in the form of Alcoholic Anonymous meetings, but no Narcotics Anonymous meetings in Franklin County - only in nearby counties like Fulton and Cumberland.

Seeing a need, and doing something about it

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Two men have joined together to create a recovery house in Franklin County, something they see a great need for.
Becky Metrick / Public Opinion

An utter lack of resources is part of what made Orrstown native Drew Reed come back to Franklin County with dreams of starting up Noah's House, a recovery house program and the first of its kind in Franklin County.

"It's hard to know that I can't recover in my own town, because there's not enough resources," Reed said. Reed moved, without his family, to Ashville, North Carolina after failing out of rehab nine times in Franklin County.

"There was 113 meetings between AA, NA, and Cocaine Anonymous; 113 in an 11-mile radius a week," Reed said. "Meetings all day, every day, even 10 p.m. All around the city."

Reed said the outpatient programming he encountered in Franklin County was either regular outpatient, one group meeting a week or intensive outpatient, which meant three meetings a week.

If you fail a drug test, you're out of those programs, he said.

Drew Reed, director of Noah's House, makes adjustments on Wednesday, July 20, 2016 to a ceiling fan he had installed on at his addiction recovery house east of Chambersburg.(Photo: Markell DeLoatch, Public Opinion)

It wasn't until he lost his job and fully hit rock bottom that he realized he needed more help. He then moved to North Carolina because Franklin County could not give him that higher level of rehabilitation.

In previous interviews, Reed said he agreed to stay there six months - with a year of possible treatment available. He then decided to stay for the full year, because he knew he wasn't ready.

When Reed returned to Franklin County, he became frustrated because when people came to him asking for help with their loved ones, he wanted to tell them that their loved ones needed to go to meetings.

"The very, very first thing I tell someone, an addict that wants to get help, is to start going to meetings," Reed said. "Getting into treatment is a whole other obstacle on it's own. There's not enough beds."

But with the lack of meetings in the area, that advice fell flat for a while. Reed is excited to get Noah's House open so that they can hold meetings in the adjacent community center he has been working on, and will require his clients to go to at least three meetings a week.

In Shippensburg, Melissa Mankameyer, founder of The Harbor, a sober community center, said she opened the center with an understanding of the need for AA meetings in the area, personally and within her community. However, after she opened two years ago she realized the extent of the drug problem in the county when people came to the Harbor for a safe sober place that got them away from their drug addictions.

"I knew we would have some issues, but I had no idea how bad it was," Mankameyer said, "until people started coming for help. And that's when we realized we needed to embrace the drug recovery community."

While there are some similar facilities in the Harrisburg and Mechanicsburg area, Mankameyer said she sees people from Newville, all over Franklin County and from as east as Gettysburg.

“"To many people, addicts are manipulators and they've burned a lot of bridges in their active addiction. Families don't want to take them back. So we're gonna try to be the buffer zone."”

Melissa Mankameyer, founder of The Harbor

"It definitely shows that we're on to something, that we're not repeated. We're meeting the needs of the people. I think that is the biggest awareness," Mankameyer said. As a social space, Mankameyer said she thinks they are filling the community's need, but currently sees a greater need for people coming out of rehab.

Mankameyer is working on claiming a space that she, too, can use for people entering recovery to stay and adjust to life outside the rehab facility while still in a safe, sober place.

"To many people, addicts are manipulators and they've burned a lot of bridges in their active addiction. Families don't want to take them back," Mankameyer said. "So we're gonna try to be the buffer zone."

Still, she sees the lack of rehab facilities just as damaging, having seen people come to her ready to go into treatment but have been told they're being put on a wait list.

"When you get somebody that's desperate and willing to get help and they have to wait," Mankameyer said, "it just drives them back to their addiction.They had a moment where they were ready to reach out."

While Reed and Mankameyer still have a long road on their mission to help the community grow their understanding and acceptance of people in recovery, they are excited by the support seen thus far.

Drew Reed, director of Noah's House, talks about the progress on Wednesday, July 20, 2016 at his recovery addiction recovery house east of Chambersburg.(Photo: Markell DeLoatch, Public Opinion)

"I think that recovery will come, recovery is coming. Many people have truly recovered, who are - it is not only the compulsion to drink or use that is removed. The fears, the angst, the trauma that they've been through has been healed. They are back in society and relationships have been restored," Mankameyer said. "It's happening. Recovery is happening. I think it will happen at a more rapid rate once we get past the stigmas."

Reed and Mankameyer are working on resource lists for around the county and surrounding areas. Reed is also working on a county task force to address the addiction problem, aiming to better how addiction and recovery is treated in area hospitals and through interactions with EMS, police and crisis workers.

And while opening the recovery house has had it's own set of hiccups due to regulations for group homes and a constant need for funding, Reed is confident in his ability to have Noah's House open with six beds available before labor day.

Reed wants to see Franklin County become more able to work through recovery like Ashville, North Carolina.

"That city is built around recovery and I know for a fact that if (Franklin County) wants to see less drugs, less drug activity, less people overdosing, then that's where this community needs to head toward," Reed said. "This community is going to have to embrace that we have a problem to begin with, then they need to take advice, from people like me. But I'm only one person, there's only so much I can do."

For more information on Noah's House or the Harbor you can check their websites.